WASHINGTON — Members of Congress are asking NASA not to slow down work on the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program now while also lobbying fellow members to provide more money for the effort in 2024.
In a Nov. 21 letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, six members of California’s congressional delegation expressed their “strongest opposition” to a NASA directive earlier this month to slow down work on MSR because of uncertainty about how much funding will be available to the program in fiscal year 2024.
The letter was signed by Sens. Alex Padilla (D) and Laphonza Butler (D) and Reps. Adam Schiff (D), Judy Chu (D), Mike Garcia (R) and Young Kim (R). The four House members all represent districts in Southern California, home of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is leading the overall MSR effort.
At a Nov. 13 advisory committee meeting, agency officials said they had recently instructed the centers working on MSR — Goddard Space Flight Center, JPL and Marshall Space Flight Center — to “start ramping back on activities” related to MSR because of the wide gap in spending between a House spending bill, which would provide the full request of $949.3 million for the program, and a Senate version that offers only $300 million.
“It’s very unfortunate that we have to make this decision at this point. However, the intent is to enable sufficient funding to carry us throughout the year so we can continue working on and architecting this mission,” Sandra Connelly, NASA deputy associate administrator for science, said at the Planetary Science Advisory Committee meeting.
NASA is operating under a continuing resolution (CR) that funds NASA at fiscal year 2023 levels, which for MSR is $822.3 million, through Feb. 2. The concern Connelly and other agency officials expressed is that if NASA spent at the 2023 rate but ended up with the lower Senate figure when Congress ultimately passes a full-year spending bill for 2024, there would be…
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